Useful
by Minutia R
Summary: Five times Mordecai Roberts reported to his employers, and one time he didn't.


The meeting-place was a seedy little pub near King's Cross Station. Mordecai wore one of his shabby old suits, a long shabby green duster, and a cap pulled down over his distinctive hair. There was nothing he could do about the color of his skin, but, well. The important thing was to be seen making an effort. Flavian thought that the reason for the subterfuge was so that no one in the Wraith organization would know that Mordecai was meeting him, but the real reason was so that Flavian wouldn't know that the Wraith organization was perfectly well aware that Mordecai was meeting him. Mordecai sighed for a time when his life had been less complicated, but it had never been, really.

The barmaid who brought the pints to their scratched and wobbly corner table smiled at Flavian, and smiled meaningfully at Mordecai. _Flavian's actually much nicer than I am_. Mordecai didn't say it. What would be the point? He gave her a cheerful grin and she blushed and everyone was happy.

"There's been talk of expanding into other series," Mordecai told Flavian. He might as well tell him, it was bound to come out soon.

Flavian frowned. "What do you mean? The Wraith's _been_ operating in other series for years, there were those schematics from One that caused so much trouble, for instance."

_That_ had been Mordecai's work, and quite a clever bit of work, too. Pity about the farms in the West Country, though. "I mean physical objects, Flavian," said Mordecai.

"That's impossible," said Flavian. "No one can do that."

_You haven't met this boy, Flavian. He touched me, and I was _there. _I could _smell.

"No one in Twelve has, until now," said Mordecai. "But it can be done. Look at the Arm of Asheth."

"They have the power of the Goddess behind them," said Flavian. "You're not suggesting the Wraith has managed to recruit some sort of . . . divine assistance, are you?"

"It _might_ be that," Mordecai said. "There are some nasty gods out there. I'll look into it. Something big has come up, that's for sure."

Flavian shook his head. "If you're right . . . this could be very bad."

Bad wasn't the word. One night, and they had fetched more dragon's blood than Twelve usually saw in a year. And the Wraith was starting to have plans drawn up for a carriage.

Mordecai could put a stop to this right now. _There's this boy, Flavian_ . . . And then the Wraith would kill Mordecai and the Dright would eat his soul. Besides, Mordecai remembered the hand on his arm—he had actually felt it—the bright face turned up towards his. He was so small. He had wanted to show Mordecai _fungus_, for God's sake. How could Mordecai turn him over to Gabriel? Gabriel was a good man, a better man than Mordecai, Heaven knew, and he would do the right thing. But would he do the kind thing?

So Mordecai said nothing. Flavian said goodbye, looking worried. Mordecai was worried too, but as he walked home he talked himself back around to cheerfulness. It was just a boy, after all. Boys got bored very quickly. In the meantime, how much harm could he do?

This was how it went: When Mordecai came back to his body, the other medium packed her things and left—this time it was a girl called Miss Perkins, and good riddance—and Mordecai sat by the mirror and waited for the Wraith to call. Sometimes it was hours. Now it had been nearly a day. It was not surprising, but Mordecai longed to go home and sleep. Maybe he would be lucky and be able to forget what had happened, for a few hours at least.

Twice, a maid came up from the kitchen and brought him a tray with food and tea. When he asked if he couldn't get something a little stronger to drink, she had giggled, but not brought him any.

Mordecai's career as a detective was a sham, and it looked like his career as a smuggler had come to an ignominious end as well. Maybe next he could get work as a child-minder?

Mordecai was starting to doze off anyway, but he jerked himself awake when the mirror clouded over, as if someone had run a bath in the room. The Wraith was calling.

"Well done, Roberts," said the Wraith, in a distinctly annoyed tone. The tone was about what Mordecai was expecting. The words weren't.

"If you want to call getting your wonder boy killed well done, I won't argue with you," said Mordecai.

"Oh, Christopher's all right," said the Wraith. "But this cat—"

"He's _what_? How?" said Mordecai, a grin of relief starting on his face. He stopped it quickly. He might not be able to see the Wraith, but the Wraith could see him.

"It was just a scratch," said the Wraith impatiently. "Focus, Roberts. The _cat_. It's _gone_. That room was _sealed_ and it just walked out!"

It had not been a scratch. There had been surprisingly little blood, but the spear must have been clear through the boy's chest, and his eyes—and then he was just gone. "We're not getting another one," said Mordecai. "Too unpredictable."

"You have _that_ right," growled the Wraith. "Just find me that cat, do you hear?" And then the mirror cleared and Mordecai was free to go.

Stumbling his way home through crowded streets, Mordecai tripped over a stray cat and it took him a few bleary seconds to recognize it as _that_ one. He grabbed for it, and it left a bleeding scratch down his arm, ruining his jacket and shirt in the process, and ran into an alleyway. Mordecai followed it. The cat looked down at him from the top of a fence, disdainfully.

"I suppose I deserved that," Mordecai told it. "It was my idea to bring you here, after all. I just wanted to see if it could be done. I wasn't thinking."

The cat's expression didn't change, but there was something—was it possible it understood? Mordecai came to a decision.

"Look, cat," he told it. "The Wraith wants to cut you up for parts, but so will any other unscrupulous person with enough magical talent to know you for what you are. And London is full of unscrupulous people with magical talent. Now, the Wraith told me to find you. But he didn't say what to do with you after. How would you like to live in a castle?"

"Wong," said the cat.

The elves had been calling to Tacroy for as long as he could remember.

It had helped, when he was small, and the other children at school had stared and snickered at his dark skin, his odd springy pale hair. The elves looked like Tacroy, and the elves were beautiful.

This argument didn't hold much water with the other children. The boys said there were no such things as elves. One girl showed him a picture in a book of a small person dressed in leaves, with delicate wings and pointed ears, definitely pale. It didn't look a bit like an elf. Tacroy realized that the elves didn't call to the other children at all.

That made it even better, somehow. Tacroy was special. His fate had been determined since he was born, a marvelous fate in the service of the Dright. My Lady told him so. My Lady was the main one of the group of elves who called Tacroy, the one who always spoke to him. Actually, she was often quite sharp with him, but that was all right, she was _My Lady_, she was entitled.

And besides, she gave him good advice. She told him to pick a posy of flowers, and bring it to the girl in his class who was home ill with pneumonia, and the girl had given him such a dazzling smile that he felt warm down to his toes. The next day, My Lady told Tacroy to trip the new boy in school as he was coming down the stairs, and that was good fun, too. The other boys had laughed like anything, and forgot to call Tacroy names for the next week.

Captain Roberts did not think it was funny. He shook his head sadly when Tacroy told him about it, and put a shaggy arm around Tacroy, and said a lot of things about compassion and neighborliness. But Captain Roberts was never sharp like My Lady, and he wasn't beautiful like My Lady.

Still, it had worried Tacroy, and he asked My Lady about it that night, when she called him. She stood listening, her eyes bright, her head cocked to one side. Listening first to Tacroy, and then to someone he couldn't hear.

"The Dright says," said My Lady, "you're to catch Captain Roberts' parrot and pull out all its tail feathers."

The truth was that Tacroy wasn't fond of Polly. But Captain Roberts was. He had taught her to say the Lord's Prayer, and fed her on the good kind of ginger snaps, that cost a penny for a packet. "I won't," said Tacroy.

My Lady put a hand to her mouth and gave a little tinkling laugh. "You will," she said.

And the next thing Tacroy knew he was standing in the parlor, and there was a smell like iron that made him retch. He could see, very dimly, Polly at his feet, torn into two pieces. For a moment he wondered what had happened. But there were blood and feathers on his nightshirt, and blood and feathers on his hands, and blood beneath his fingernails, and he may have been a bit slow when it came to the elves but he wasn't stupid. The only mercy was that Captain Roberts was going rather deaf and had slept through it too.

Tacroy stuffed his nightshirt into the oven, and washed his hands, and went back to bed. The next morning, when Captain Roberts found Polly, he assumed that the widow next door's cat had somehow gotten in. He cried. Tacroy was too horrified to cry.

The experience taught Tacroy two things. First, never disobey the Dright. It was no use and only caused worse trouble. The second took a bit longer. But soon he learned how to think sideways—that's how he described it to himself, when he dared describe it at all. To lie not just with his words or with his face, but with the outermost layer of his thoughts; to misunderstand deliberately; to disobey without seeming to; to slither out.

Tacroy stopped loving My Lady that night. It had taken many more years for him to learn to hate her. But by one spring evening nearly twenty years later, when she called him out of what had been a perfectly pleasant nap to attend on her and a couple of her lackeys at the garret near Covent Garden, he hated her very thoroughly indeed.

Not that it made any difference. She called, and he came. He jostled through the crowds in the market, if jostled was the right word for someone as insubstantial as he was. He trudged up the narrow staircase, slipped into the dusty room, and sat down at My Lady's feet.

Her work on Tacroy must have been prospering, back in Eleven. Her fur skirts swept the floor, and she had added a new necklace to her collection, a long string of red beads that clacked together when she turned her head. Other than that, she was the same My Lady he had always known. Tacroy had grown up in the meantime, but she never seemed to change. Long slim body, arms with the high gloss of some polished wood, hands with long graceful fingers. Elegant lines of neck and cheek and eyebrow, hair like a blazing halo held back with many gold bands. She was still the most beautiful woman Tacroy had ever seen. Sometimes he wondered if he loved Rosalie because she was as unlike My Lady as it was possible for a person to be.

He cut off that line of thought quickly. He would _not_ think about Rosalie when he was reporting to My Lady.

"I have been receiving some anomalous data, over the past year," said My Lady. "Explain them."

"How can I?" said Tacroy. "I don't know what you're talking about."

My Lady's eyebrows went up. "That is not an acceptable answer, septman."

It was an accurate one. But if My Lady wasn't satisfied with the answers Tacroy gave her, she would keep him here until she got ones she liked better. Once, when Tacroy was seventeen and feeling experimental himself, he had tried to outwait her. It turned out that My Lady had much more patience for Tacroy than he had for My Lady. He sighed and tried again.

"Look, I worked with Gabriel and his department for years," said Tacroy. "They're good people. They're doing good work. You can't order me to betray them all and then expect me to like it."

"We discussed that," said My Lady, and Tacroy felt hatred and anger flare up in his chest before he could stop it. He didn't like giving her the satisfaction—his emotions were her meat and drink—but he couldn't help it when he remembered _that_ conversation. Shortly after he had begun working for the Wraith, as miserable as he had ever been, he had told her things he would never tell _anyone_ . . . he had had to.

"But you have been liking it," My Lady went on. "You have been traveling through the worlds," here My Lady wrinkled her nose with distaste; Eleven people disapproved of the messy multiplicity of the worlds, "and you have been enjoying yourself quite a bit."

"Oh, well," said Tacroy. "I like traveling. And maybe I'm getting used to being evil."

"I am losing patience with you," said My Lady. "You are _not_ getting used to being evil. You are unhappier than ever most of the time. Explain these contradictions at once."

"How should I know?" said Tacroy. "Maybe I feel guiltier _because _I've been enjoying myself."

My Lady breathed out sharply through her nose, but appeared to consider this. "Was your Captain Roberts—" she squinted as though she were reading a tiny, invisible book—"a Puritan?"

Tacroy sighed. "He was a Quaker," he said. They tried to categorize all these things, and they didn't _understand_ any of them. "There haven't been Puritans for hundreds of years—at least, they don't call themselves that anymore."

"Mm," said My Lady, clearly putting the last thing he'd said into a box marked _Tacroy's opinions_, which didn't count for anything. "I do not like this. It does not correlate with any hypothesis. More tests will have to be done. One cannot serve two masters."

It was an Eleven saying, and like most of those it didn't mean quite what is said. Tacroy had no patience for puzzling it out. "That's right," he said. "I serve three."

My Lady covered her mouth and gave her silvery laugh. When Tacroy was six he'd have done quite nasty things, to get that laugh as his reward—had done, in fact. Now he was just tired. "If the Dright had not designated you for a study of morality," said My Lady, "I think he would have done well to have used you in an experiment on humor."

"Thanks," said Tacroy.

"Go away," said My Lady, and he was only too pleased to.

It was not until after he had returned to his body—after he had decided that his sleep was ruined for the night, and had got up and made himself a cup of sweet tea with a generous amount of brandy—that Mordecai let himself remember the biggest thing that had changed in his work the past year, which might account for him feeling differently about it.

Apparently, Mordecai had got quite good at sideways thinking, over the years.

Mordecai huddled low, elbows on the scratched corner table, the brim of his hat almost touching his pint of beer. He was in no mood for anyone from Chrestomanci Castle today. But when Flavian dashed in, his round honest face glowing, Mordecai couldn't help but smile back.

"Did it work?" said Flavian breathlessly.

"Splendidly," said Mordecai. It had worked so well it had nearly killed Christopher, and how dare Flavian grin about it.

It wasn't Flavian's fault, of course. Mordecai had known about the trap. But he couldn't tell anyone without either throwing several people whom he rather liked to the Wraith gang, or revealing the depth his own involvement in the gang, or most likely both. This was how it went. It was Mordecai's fault when mermaids were butchered by the Wraith's business partners, and Mordecai's fault when Christopher got his head smashed in by Gabriel's agents. Mordecai had been serving three masters for years. He wasn't sure how much longer he could do it.

Flavian was still looking at him expectantly. "They've had to suspend operations in the other series again," said Mordecai. "No one knows for how long."

"I hope it's permanently!" said Flavian.

_Oh, Flavian, not half so much as I do._ And it didn't seem like such a vain hope, after all—Christopher had not shown for two weeks. Surely he had got scared. Or at least, if that _was_ a vain hope when it came to Christopher, surely he had got bored.

"But what Gabriel's _really_ worried about is these weapons from One," said Flavian. "Have you managed to find anything out?"

"Sorry," said Mordecai. "Different part of the operation. Top secret."

The barmaid came by with Flavian's beer, and twinkled at Mordecai. Mordecai twinkled back, more out of reflex than anything else. Then she left and it was the old dance again. Flavian asked questions. Mordecai gave just enough accurate information to remain a useful source, but nothing that would endanger the Wraith's important dealings. Tired, Mordecai was tired of it all. "But enough about me," he said. "How are things at the castle?"

Flavian took a deep swallow of his beer, and set the glass back on the table with a thump. "The good news," he said slowly, "is that we've found the next Chrestomanci."

"Oh, well done!" said Mordecai. It was good news. He couldn't imagine why Flavian was looking as glum as he himself had felt at the beginning of their meeting.

"Not my doing," said Flavian, a little too quickly. "In fact, I rather made a botch of it the first time, but even Gabriel was fooled, it was one of our consultants, Dr. Pawson." Flavian blinked at Mordecai, perhaps aware that he was wandering. "The bad news is that he's eleven years old."

"Oh. Ouch. No retirement for Gabriel for years yet, then. Still, it's good to get them young, isn't it?" Privately Mordecai felt a little sorry for the boy. His fate had been determined since he was born, and he was just now finding out about it. "At least he'll get the best training," he added.

"Funny you should mention that," said Flavian sourly. "The worst news is, I've been assigned to be his tutor. And he's an absolute little monster."

Mordecai was taken aback. Was this Flavian? He never hated _anybody_. "He can't be that bad," said Mordecai.

Flavian shook his head. "You've never met him, Mordecai."

Old Mrs. Licari shut her violin case with a final-sounding snap, and left. Two burly thugs came to take the carriage and its load back to the workshop; they did not, thankfully, ask any questions about how it came to be burned. Mordecai got up off the couch, folded the blankets, sat by the mirror, and waited. Presently the mirror clouded.

"A load of dragon's blood ruined. The carriage nearly destroyed," said the Wraith. "You had better have a good explanation for this."

Mordecai shrugged carelessly. "When you deal in dragon's blood," he said, "you have to be prepared for the dragon to object occasionally."

"I don't find you funny, Roberts. I never have." There was an ominous silence, and then a sigh. "Ah, well. You'll make it up next trip."

This was it. "There isn't going to be a next trip," said Mordecai. "Christopher isn't going to do them anymore."

The Wraith chuckled. "Did a bit of dragonfire give my nephew cold feet?" he said. "Not to worry. I'll sort him out."

_You stay _away _from him—_Mordecai breathed in. He took his handkerchief out of his pocket, and fiddled with it. He breathed out. Softly, softly. Sideways. "It's my skin I'm worried about," he said. "I'm nearly solid when he's with me. If that dragon had aimed a bit to the right, we wouldn't be having this conversation." _I wish we weren't having this conversation_.

"If you're worried about your skin," said the Wraith, chilly and remote, "you should know better than to cross me."

"I'll take my chances," said Mordecai. "You're very frightening, but you're not a dragon."

Would he buy that? The truth was, the Wraith was twice as frightening as a dragon. But it didn't matter anymore. Mordecai had been serving three masters for years. When had three become four? Gabriel, the Wraith, the Dright . . . Christopher.

"I go without Christopher," said Mordecai, "or I don't go at all."

"D'you think you're irreplaceable, Roberts?" snarled the Wraith.

"Yes," said Mordecai. "I'm the best spirit traveler in the world, and you know it." More to the point—and point was the word, the thought twisted like a knife—Christopher liked Mordecai. He trusted him. _He_ would not accept a replacement.

There was another long silence. It was disconcerting, not to be able to watch the man's face when he went like this. _Am I about to die? _Or maybe Mordecai had not thought sideways enough, and the Dright would catch on to his rebellion. _Is my soul about to be eaten?_

"On the other hand," the Wraith mused, almost to himself, "those last few trips you made to Series One were _quite_ productive. Perhaps it's nearly time . . . yes," he said with decision, "I believe I still _do_ have a use for you, Roberts."

_That's all I am to them, a useful Thing_, Christopher had said bitterly. That bitterness was almost as shocking as what had happened next. Christopher, who was always so cheerful . . . where had he come by it? _Look in the mirror._

"I'm very glad to hear it," said Mordecai.

The Wraith chuckled again. "I'll be in touch," he said, and the mirror unclouded, and Mordecai was left staring into his own face. It was several trembling minutes before he could stand up and start making his way home.

Still. That had gone better than he had expected.

Mordecai took out the telegram that he kept in his left breast pocket, right above his heart. Like all of Rosalie's communications, it was short and to the point. CASTLE BY 1 WICKET STOP WHO NEEDS YOU STOP Mordecai smiled. A little scorn from Rosalie was always refreshing, even if she couldn't know how well he deserved it.

That whiled away about ten seconds. Mordecai stood up, stretched, walked to the other end of the room, walked back, and sat down. He picked up the newspaper and flipped to the agony column. Ciphers. Mordecai hated ciphers. He liked mysterious romances, but tonight even the plight of Your Caged Nightingale who was afraid that her letters to A Certain Gentleman were being intercepted couldn't hold his interest. He set the paper back down next to the book Flavian had lent him, last time they met. It was some fellow's memoirs of his walking tours of the Lakes. Mordecai couldn't even bear to look at it.

He got up again, and walked over to the window. A street musician was playing the violin somewhere below, a tune Mordecai didn't recognize, quick and sprightly. He settled his elbows on the windowsill and listened.

It was Thursday night. He could walk two blocks, knock up old Mrs. Licari and her violin, tell her that plans had changed. He could.

It wouldn't help, of course. Christopher wouldn't be there. Why should he be? Mordecai had made it quite clear that he wasn't coming himself. And Christopher was a sensible boy. Surely by this time he had realized that it was for the best.

Mordecai would never see Christopher again.

He shut the window softly and sat back down. He picked up the paper, but didn't look at it. He had got quite good at sideways thinking, over the years, but not good enough to fool himself about this. If he went, Christopher would be there. He wouldn't even be angry. He'd just smile that brilliant smile of his, the way he'd smiled and thanked Mordecai after Mordecai killed him.

Christopher had never thought of Mordecai as a useful Thing. He had only ever thought of him as a friend. But Mordecai could be useful to Christopher, in this small way.


End file.
